Whether Congress, and by extension the UPA, is a criminal enterprise could be a matter of detail. But evidently the UPA rewards criminal behavior. Among scores of instances, let’s just talk about a recent one related to Teesta Setalvad. She gained notoriety by becoming, as Sandeep puts it, “both the CEO and Chief Legal Officer of the Gujarat Riots Cottage Industry Inc,” in his blog post “The Wages of Teesta’s Sins“. Her sins include, but are not limited to, perjury in the Supreme Court. Check out the blog “Evidence Against Teesta Setalvad” for details. Now Teesta is being rewarded by the UPA for her tireless efforts at subverting the rule of law, etc. Congress has a history of rewarding criminals as long as it profits the Congress. Here’s a bit of history that the Indian school textbooks will not highlight.
The shining career of Bholanath and Devendra Pandey started off with the hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane in 1978.
Bholanath and Devendra Pandey are two friends who in 1978 hijacked an Indian Airlines plane on a domestic flight. They demanded the release of opposition leader Indira Gandhi (who had been arrested by Indian parliament) and the withdrawal of all the cases against her son Sanjay Gandhi. [Ref.] They carried only toy weapons. After keeping 132 passengers hostage for some hours, they surrendered in the presence of media.
The Indian National Congress party rewarded them with party tickets for 1980 state assembly election. Both won the election and became members of the legislative assembly of Uttar Pradesh. Bhola served as a Congress MLA from 1980 to 1985 while Devendra remained a member of the house for two terms.
Devendra served the party as a general secretary of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) until recently. He is now nurturing the Sultanpur constituency in the hope of a Congress ticket in the next elections.
Bholanath unsuccessfully contested the 1999 Lok Sabha elections from Salempur as a Congress candidate.
The wiki article references the book by Kishin R. Wadhwaney Indian Airports (Shocking Ground Realities). 2005 Diamond Pocket Books. p. 124. Here are jpegs of the relevant pages:
So now Teesta Setalvad attempted and to some extent succeeded in hijacking the legal process of the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat. She is being rewarded. The bunch at the top of the UPA heap are most accurately described as criminals. Criminals rewarding one of their own kind is neither new nor surprising.
What is hard to understand is why the Indian public meekly accepts this sorry state of affairs. Perhaps the explanation is simple: that Indians on average are dishonest people. They are not troubled by dishonesty because they are themselves dishonest. (See my post “The Habit of Being Honest” (Feb 2011) and “The Habit of Being Dishonest” (Nov 2011) for more on this topic.)
Related post: On this matter of hijacking of an Indian Airlines, I had written a post “Hijack a Plane, Get Rewarded by Govt of India” in Dec 2011.

